


it's through the ink that his heart breathes

by wafflelate



Category: Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen
Genre: (to Dreaming of Sunshine not Naruto sorry the tags are synned), Canon Compliant, Connected Works, Friendship, Gen, Not Cross-Posted, POV Third Person Limited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-07-25 19:20:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16204001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wafflelate/pseuds/wafflelate
Summary: Sai thinks about Shikako and talks to Kiba.





	it's through the ink that his heart breathes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Silver_Queen_DoS](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silver_Queen_DoS/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Dreaming of Sunshine](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/53648) by Silver Queen. 
  * Inspired by [Fanarts for Queenie!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16179194) by [Unorganized_Shelf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unorganized_Shelf/pseuds/Unorganized_Shelf). 



> This is my fic to go with Shelfie's art! It's a little late because the Haku and Zabuza piece ate my life and ended up being so long. Happy birthday again, belatedly, SQ! Even though I showed you the google doc of this yesterday.
> 
> Also, I will not be crossposting this fic to fanfiction.net because I hate their upload feature. Thanks for understanding, folks!

_Stacking the letters and the pictures too close for anyone outside of his own imagination to read_  
_Because it's through the ink that his heart beats, that his heart breathes  
And we all just wanted to write these notes:_

 _Check if you like me  
_ _Check if you don't_

 _—_ [ _“Here I Am” by Anis Mojgani_ ](https://youtu.be/GembNtyjRYw)

 

* * *

 

Sai waits in the training field beside the village memorial. Team 7’s habitual training ground — not a place Sai would have chosen himself, as he’s given to understand that Hatake Kakashi guards the training field carefully, but Shikako had insisted when she’d passed along Inuzuka Kiba’s request to meet.

“Really,” she’d said. “You don’t want to meet him at the Inuzuka compound. You’ll probably be roped into helping with the spring puppy births. Kakashi-sensei isn’t even in the village and Sasuke and I will be... busy.”

A vague proclamation of being ‘busy’ from Shikako could mean that she has ANBU duties... or just that she’s dodging someone in particular and desires that they not be able to find her... _or_ that she will be busy with something it wouldn’t be safe to tell Sai.

The books Sai has been using for research say that sharing secrets is an essential part of friendships. A sign of trust, a gesture of intimacy, an important step forward. This makes sense; in the dormitories of ROOT a single secret is often enough to destroy a fellow agent. Contraband. Disloyal thoughts. Illicit activities and substances. Unauthorized detours on missions. Sai has seen both superiors and inferiors (as much as the program has those, under Danzō-sama, anyway) fall to such things. Sai has occasionally been the one to push.

Sai knows some of Shikako’s secrets. She was almost certainly not in Land of Rice when Land of Hot Springs exploded. The stone she wears around her neck is probably not part of her project to learn to store chakra inside things.

He was not told. The knowledge was not a gift, not extended to him, not meant for him. Nara Shikako would probably prefer he _not_ know. He’s seen the tension in the way she looks at him, sometimes. Nevertheless, Sai knows — _suspects_ — these things and has said nothing.

In Danzō-sama’s eyes, sentimentality is worse than selfishness.

Keeping someone else’s secret is worse than having your own. Neither is acceptable, both result in harsh punishment, but colluding with others usually results in decommissioning. Sai has seen this worked into a finely detailed game, an excellent source of leverage. Sai suspects that he himself is caught in one of these webs — and yet he could not extract himself even if he wanted to.

He has shared things with Nara Shikako. Not just the obvious, that she’s successfully subverted him and he is vulnerable to her whims. Other things. His brother. A hug. The ROOT mission he’d been assigned and purposefully failed in Bird.

It probably isn’t safe to trust her — it’s never safe to trust anyone, especially someone to whom you seem to have no value — and yet Sai does. He frequently distracts himself wondering why Shikako steps carefully around his obligations to Danzō and often asks after his health and safety, but ultimately it doesn’t matter. He cannot extract himself, as there’s nowhere to go, and he has no wish to do so.

Today, on Shikako’s recommendation, Sai is meeting with Inuzuka Kiba. Shikako had told him that Kiba was looking for him at the New Years festival to exchange and encouraged him to make contact with Kiba.

And Sai... had done it. It had taken some careful justification to Danzō-sama — questions about maintaining his cover and the secrecy of ROOT, well-hidden arguments that Sai had known he absolutely couldn’t be caught purposefully making.

At Sai’s side are two tall, neat stacks of sketchbooks. Part of his daily training regime is drawing as quickly and with as much detail as he can. It is the only part of training that Sai enjoys.

Shikako has provided him with many things to draw. Stories, many of them with animals, and the myth about the moon princess. Danzō-sama had scoffed at the contents, but Sai had been allowed to continue. It has made this exchange possible — Sai would have nothing to exchange if he couldn’t draw it himself.

The books say that reciprocity is important.

The first to arrive is Akamaru, trotting into the training field at an easy pace and barking a greeting. He’s larger than when Sai last saw him, portraying the typical rapid growth of a post-adolescence Inuzuka ninken. He wags his tail. His tongue lolls out.

Akamaru had been a very good teammate on the Land of Moon mission, their language barrier notwithstanding. Sai’s brush moves over the page of the sketch book open on his lap without looking. Quick flicks of his brush lay out details. The eyes, the nose, the blurred movement of his tail, the relaxed posture of his body.

“Hello, Akamaru-san,” Sai says to him. Kiba has always spoken to and of his ninken as if Akamaru is fully sentient, and Sai has need no evidence that this is not the case.

The ninken yips at him, but holds still until Sai has pulled his brush away from the page completely. Then Akamaru continues forward, sniffing at Sai’s stack of books and at Sai himself and inspecting Sai’s still-wet depiction of him without touching the books, Sai himself, or the art.

“You said you’d help me carry this!” Kiba calls from down the path. Sai has promised no one that he would help carrying anything, so he looks at Akamaru.

Akamaru maybe looks a little guilty. He shuffles off in the direction of Kiba’s voice. When he comes back, Kiba is there as well. He has a box under each arm. Akamaru is balancing a third box on his back, likely with chakra.

Sai wonders how Kiba was previously holding the third box — but then, if Akamaru can balance it with chakra, Kiba probably can to.

“Hey, Sai, good to see you!” Kiba says as he and Akamaru set their boxes down. “You’re damn hard to find, you know.”

“I know,” Sai acknowledges. “It is because you are not yet skilled enough to do so, and in truth only found me today because Shikako told you were I would be.”

Kiba stares at him for a moment and then erupts with laughter. It’s an uncontrollable, full-body expression of emotion. It makes Kiba’s face scrunch up, it bares his teeth, it shakes his whole frame. Fascinating but uncomfortable-looking, as by the end of it Kiba is gasping for breath.

“Oh, man, you got me there,” Kiba says, when he can speak coherently again. “Oh, man, where the hell did Shikako even _find_ you? Have you met Sasuke yet? I wanna be there when you roast Sasuke.”

“Uchiha Sasuke is very skilled,” Sai says. “I would not want to fight him without appropriate preparation, and a fire jutsu would be... inappropriate. A swift assassination would be much more likely to succeed.”

“Uh,” Kiba says. “No, dude, roast is like. Trash talk? It’s not a _fight_.”

“Oh, the culture and practice of adolescent males engaging in insults, often exaggerated, to facilitate emotional bonding.” Sai nods. “I am aware of this. You should know that he also wouldn’t be able to find me, so that would likely be a poor arena for you and him to compete in.”

“Wow, Sai,” Kiba says, shaking his head. “Never change, okay? Anyway, look, I went around to all my cousins and tracked down all the — hang on, is that Akamaru?”

Kiba is looking at Sai’s sketchbook.

Somewhat reluctantly, Sai hands it over.  The ink is quick drying and will no longer smear even if Kiba closes the book.

“It looks just like him!” Kiba crows. “Oh, man, you even got that thing he does with his eyebrows — I mean, he doesn’t have eyebrows, but you know.”

“Akamaru is an enjoyable subject to draw,” Sai says.

Sai glances at Akamaru, who woofs from where he’s sprawled between boxes. His tail thumps against the ground.

“Stop being such an attention hog,” Kiba says. “He already drew you once. Jeez. Embarrassing.”

“No,” Sai says slowly. Carefully. “I would enjoy drawing Akamaru more.”

Kiba brightens. “Really? Hey do you — do you think you could do a picture I could keep?”

Sai inclines his head. “I would have to gather supplies.”

“Oh, totally, dude, I know you didn’t come here expecting to have Akamaru model for you. You probably need, like, special paper, or something, right? We could go later this week, I’ll buy it.”

“..I would like that,” Sai says after a moment of wondering how Shikako could have seen _this_ coming.

“Cool.” Kiba turns and opens one of the boxes. “So! I didn’t really know what you would like most — Shikako’s kinda right, you know, we were reading _trash_ in Land of Moon, and it took so long to get ahold of you — well, we can totally do better than Samurai Genji, you know?”

Sai does _not_ know, but he nods.

“—so I borrowed all these from my cousins and whoever,” Kiba continues, pulling issue after issue out of the box, “so that way you can look at a bunch of stuff and decide what you want!”

“That... is very generous of you,” Sai says. It is the kind of statement that would lead a fellow ROOT agent to get to the point and reveal their ulterior motive.

“Nah,” Kiba says. “Like, most of these weren’t gonna get read again anyway, so I was just saving them the trouble of throwing them out. Here, try this one.”

Then Kiba starts handing issues of manga to Sai, explaining all of them with patient enthusiasm. Sometimes Akamaru adds helpful commentary that Sai can’t understand but that makes Kiba go, “Oh! Right, that!” and launch into another topic completely.

It’s not as focused as Shikako’s storying-telling sessions, but it’s not a bad way to pass an afternoon.


End file.
